App review: Google Street View - As good as it gets

The latest is a standalone app for Street View, Google’s ambitious project to virtually capture the whole world.

Still getting used to all the changes from Google — the new logo, the letter ‘G’ on every app? Well, the company is rolling out changes faster than you can say “Alphabet” (that’s what the parent company is now called; something you know if you haven’t been living under a rock).

The latest is a standalone app for Street View, Google’s ambitious project to virtually capture the whole world. The home screen greets you with a world map, with the “top 100 results” from around the globe. This has everything from Machu Picchu to the Parthenon in Athens, to less-common underwater shots from Apo Island, Philippines.

Enough to spend the whole weekend being a virtual traveller. The big change, though, is that you can not only view the spherical images, but also click and upload them, thereby adding to the app. It’s all a work in progress: your uploaded images won’t let people do a virtual walk, that professionally mapped images do. Also, the images are heavy, and it drained the battery on our phone rapidly causing it to slow down.

But one day, imagine, you’ll just be able to stroll through places on the app as if you were actually there.